DUKE HERCULES II.'S MARRIAGE.

57

Ferrara at that time perhaps the most attractive and desirable residence for a scholar, of any city in Italy.

Another circumstance occurred not many years after Morato's first establishment in Ferrara, which very notably contributed to impress a special character on the learned society there congregated, and to make that city a rallying point for the free thought, which was beginning yeast-like to heave the surface of Italian life.

The difficulties of protecting his dominions from the encroachments and greed of the Church, which compelled Alphonso to be continually oscillating between the friendship of the Emperor, or of the French King, according to the ever shifting aspects of Italian affairs, and the preponderance of the danger imminent from one side or the other, necessitated in 1528 an alliance with the latter. And with this view a marriage was arranged between Hercules, who was to succeed his father Alphonso in the Duchy as second duke of that name, and Renée, daughter of Louis XII. Hercules, then just twenty years old, went to Paris, where the marriage was celebrated on the 28th of June, 1528, and brought home his bride in the November of that year.

And now again, as six and twenty years before, when Alphonso brought his Borgia home, there was to be a ceremonial entry of the heir apparent's bride. But times were changed. And Ferrara, both court and city, had other matters to think of besides gala processions and festivities. The clergy, and the university doctors indeed went out to meet her,* as in duty bound; and the citizens equally as in

* Frizzi, vol. iv. p. 307.

duty bound, hung out of their windows their gaycoloured silk rugs and curtains, as Italians do to the present day on the occasions when anything royal or divine has need of such glorification. But we hear of no preparations for Homeric feasting, nor of wonderful gold dresses, and dancing all day, and morris dances at night. The entry of Louis XII's daughter was a very tame affair. And then Renée herself was a very different person from the splendid Lucrezia, who captivated all eyes, as she sat superb in black and gold, on her proudly pacing steed. Renée on the contrary came in on a litter; for "this one was by no means handsome, as were the two Duchesses, who preceded her. On the contrary she was, according to a MS. record of that period, somewhat crooked. But this was compensated by her elevated mind, her intellect, her literary culture, and her great partiality for learned men."*

Alas! Poor Renée must have valued these good gifts far more highly than even those of her sex most rich in such are wont to do, if she would not in her own heart have bitterly denied the value of any such compensation! Lucrezia with a dower of infamy

66

compensated" by beauty, became the happy wife of an affectionate husband. Renée with her store of virtues, and rich intellectual qualities, found but a state prison, heart-ache, and an unloving lord in this exile from her native France.

And then that "elevated intelligence," which was to compensate for crookedness, was but little likely to contribute to the happiness of one in the position of Renée of France at the court of Ferrara. Elevated

* Frizzi, vol. iv. p. 307.

CONTRASTED FORTUNES.

59

intelligence was a dangerous commodity just about that time in Italy! For we have already seen the tendency of men's minds in those days to think of things that it was far better not to think about at all ; a tendency which it very soon became necessary to extinguish and trample out at whatever cost. Thus we find that Renée, not content with having studied "the learned tongues, history, literature, philosophy, mathematics, and even astrology," and "unable to bridle her fervid intellect, gave herself over to the study of theology, and to complete her misfortune selected for her instructor one of the most celebrated of the new-fangled teachers who then infested Europe," no other than one John Calvin. And the result was, that, whereas the beautiful and catholic Lucrezia was able,-juvenile indiscretions and ardour of pulse happily moderated and past-to spend her mornings in orthodox devotion performed secundum artem, and her evenings in embroidery, to such purpose as to have secured the good word of Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, and learned Doctors, and the final general approval of Mnemosyne in her official surplice and rochet,-poor Duchess Renée with her "elevated intellect," and unhappy improprieties in the matter of theological inquiry, is marked as a moral leper by the same consistent ecclesiastical Muse, and finally consigned to a worse limbo than that of their own sulphureous pages.

But it is not to be supposed that Renée came to her husbaud's court branded as a heretic; though we find that she forthwith established in her own apartments a literary academy," or meeting of men

66

of letters, which, we are told,* was “much for the honour of literature, but not at all for that of the catholic religion." Nor, though almost all of those learned men, whom she patronised, turned out later to be, as the historian says, tarred with the same brush, was the delicate orthodoxy of her husband Hercules offended by any ill savour of heresy at that time. For the Church-in-danger alarm bell had not yet rung in Italy. Clement VII. having quite enough to do to hold his own among the clashing of the perfectly material interests of quite satisfactorily eatholic, but very unscrupulous princes, thought of nothing less than the smelling out of traces of heretical taint. And it needed something more appreciable by the ducal mind than speculations about justification by faith to stimulate its orthodoxy into activity.

So the Duchess for years after her marriage gathered around her the best minds in her little capital, and talked her own talk with them, unmolested and unsuspected.

Nor can it be concluded that Morato was not at this time imbued with the new opinions, from the fact, that he evidently stood well in the court society at Ferrara. In the absence of all ascertained dates to enable us to fix with precision the leading events of his life, we must content ourselves with concluding, that it must have been between the years 1520 and 1525, in all probability, that he first established himself in that city. We know that he there married a Ferrarese lady, and that his daughter Olympia was born there in 1526. Now it is clear from the letters of Calcagnini that he must about that time have adopted at least those

* Frizzi, vol. iv. p. 307.

ANECDOTE OF BEMBO.

61

doctrines on justification by faith, and on free-will, which a few years afterwards were stamped as heretical and visited with persecution. But nobody on the southern side of the Alps dreamed as yet that such opinions, must, or even might, lead to that dreaded consummation, separation from the Church. Morato was at this time a valued member of the learned society of Ferrara; and though doubtless a frequenter of those academic meetings in the apartments of the Duchess, which were afterwards discovered to have been so heretically pernicious, he was as yet well esteemed by the most unsuspectedly orthodox churchmen.

A little anecdote from the vast repertory of such supplied by the "quarrels of authors," may serve to show that the favourable opinion of Messer Peregrino Morato was no little valued among the set with whom he lived. The celebrated Pietro Bembo, who was a few years after this time called to the purple by Paul III., had passed some years at Ferrara in the early part of his life, and having formed friendships with most of the literary men there, never lost an opportunity of paying them a visit, and was thus intimate with all the knot among whom Morato lived. Now it seems that Bernardo Tasso, the father of the poet, who was secretary to the Duchess Renée, had somewhat maliciously written to Bembo that Morato had accused him of plagiarising certain grammatical speculations, from one Francesco Fortunio. Upon which Bembo, writing in reply on the 27th May, 1529, manifests great anxiety to convince Morato that he is in error. "On the contrary," writes Bembo, "he stole these things from me, together with the very

*